s finally
destroyed and the land attack converted into a blockade. "With this
reverse," says a French naval officer, "began in the French people a
regrettable reaction against the navy. The wonders to which it had
given birth, its immense services, were forgotten. Its value was no
longer believed. The army, more directly in contact with the nation,
had all its favor, all its sympathy. The prevailing error, that the
greatness or decay of France depended upon some Rhenish positions,
could not but favor these ideas adverse to the sea service, which have
made England's strength and our weakness."[76]

During this year, 1704, the battle of Blenheim was fought, in which
the French and Bavarian troops were wholly overthrown by the English
and German under Marlborough and Prince Eugene. The result of this
battle was that Bavaria forsook the French alliance, and Germany
became a secondary theatre of the general war, which was waged
thereafter mainly in the Netherlands, Italy, and the Peninsula.

The following year, 1705, the allies moved against Philip V. by two
roads,--from Lisbon upon Madrid, and by way of Barcelona. The former
attack, though based upon the sea, was mainly by land, and resultless;
the Spanish people in that quarter showed unmistakably that they would
not welcome the king set up by foreign powers. It was different in
Catalonia. Carlos III. went there in person with the allied fleet. The
French navy, inferior in numbers, kept in port. The French army also
did not appear. The allied troops invested the town, aided by three
thousand seamen and supported by supplies landed from the fleet, which
was to them both base of supplies and line of communications.
Barcelona surrendered on the 9th of October; all Catalonia welcomed
Carlos, and the movement spread to Aragon and Valencia, the capital of
the latter province declaring for Carlos.

The following year, 1706, the French took the offensive in Spain on
the borders of Catalonia, while defending the passes of the mountains
toward Portugal. In the absence of the allied fleet, and of the
succors which it brought and maintained, the resistance was weak, and
Barcelona was again besieged, this time by the French party supported
by a French fleet of thirty sail-of-the-line and numerous transports
with supplies from the neighboring port of Toulon. The siege, begun
April 5, was going on hopefully; the Austrian claimant himself was
within the walls, the prize of success; but